Facebook Advertising in Malaysia: An Overview For Business Owners

It’s become an intuitive thing to start a Facebook Page for your business, and to update it regularly with content, and the numbers show – Malaysia has 31.19 million people, out of which 3.2 million people, are Facebook Page Admins, based on the statistics that Facebook Ads provides. However, most people find it hard to understand the correlation between the number of likes a page has, and the number of people reached through a post on the page. A page with 6000 likes, wouldn’t reach 6000 people in one post. In fact, based on my experience as an Admin on many pages, a page with 10,000 likes could reach as little as 100-1000 people for an average post. Starting a Facebook Page is free, but the attention it gets isn’t free. And recent developments will have pushed brands to pay for reach that they would have gotten previously.

According to Forbes –

“Facebook has over 5 million advertising clients. Small businesses were also the key driver behind Facebook’s latest milestone: The social network announced on Monday it has more than 5 million active advertisers, up from 4 million in September.” – Forbes

Facebook obviously has to prioritize paying clients that spend on Facebook Ads, vs those that don’t. On top of that the Facebook algorithm has recently been refined to focus on friends and family – hence brands will face a challenge getting seen in the feed organically.

“Facebook has introduced sweeping changes to the kinds of posts, videos and photos that its more than two billion members will see most often, saying on Thursday that it would prioritize what their friends and family share and comment on while de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands.

The shift is the most significant overhaul in years to Facebook’s News Feed, the cascading screen of content that people see when they log into the social network. Over the next few weeks, users will begin seeing fewer viral videos and news articles shared by media companies. Instead, Facebook will highlight posts that friends have interacted with — for example, a photo of your dog or a status update that many of them have commented on or liked.

The changes are intended to maximize the amount of content with “meaningful interaction” that people consume on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview.”

Based on my experience growing likes for various pages, a ‘Like’ for a property related page in 2018 would cost around RM0.74-RM1.2. However it was much lower back 6-8 years ago, where it would be between RM0.36-RM0.59. Essentially the cost of attention goes up because there are more people on the Facebook platform, and more pages, and more posts.

Hence breaking in to someone’s Facebook News Feed is a challenge for brands, especially because…in Facebook’s own words:

“So how does News Feed know which of those 1,500 stories to show? By letting people decide who and what to connect with, and by listening to feedback. When a user likes something, that tells News Feed that they want to see more of it; when they hide something, that tells News Feed to display less of that content in the future. This allows us to prioritise an average of 300 stories out of these 1,500 stories to show each day.”

So, what’s your chances of your brand’s message being the one story seen, from the 300 of 1500 potential stories? Quite low if you’re not paying, and even lower if your content isn’t interesting. As a digital consultant, my job is to improve your chances – and make sure your message is refined and seen. If you like the insights I’ve put together, contact me here on LinkedIn or on Whatsapp me, Josh Lim, at +60123995674 to find out how you can make your Facebook Page grow and your posts actually be seen by people, who can then be converted to customers. I look forward to hearing from you.